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‘Pioneering’ student success

The work of Professor Paula Parks is closing achievement gaps at Bakersfield College

By California State University, Bakersfield

January 19^th, 2022

This is the first in a series of 2022 CSUB Alumni Hall of Fame profiles.

Alexis Brown didn’t know where to go or what to do when she showed up at Bakersfield College in July 2019 to register for classes at freshman orientation and somehow missed the sessions.

So her mother told her to call a woman whose information she saw on a flyer advertising the campus’ Umoja program: Dr. Paula Parks.

Parks answered her phone and not only told Brown where to go but stayed on the line with her as she signed up for her first college courses.

“It was like an hour, hour-and-a-half phone call,“ said Brown, now a sophomore double majoring in nursing and psychology. “I don’t know if she was busy or not but for her to sit there on the phone with me? It told me a lot about her character.”

Parks has been going way above and beyond for students at Bakersfield College since joining it as a journalist interested in a part-time teaching career 25 years ago.

When very few students were getting through remedial English courses and into degree-applicable ones, Parks led a rewriting of the curriculum to get them on a faster path to graduation. When she saw Black students faring worst in almost all success categories, she launched a program for them integrating academics, support services and cultural enrichment that is narrowing achievement gaps.

If students struggle with transportation, Parks finds them bus passes, Brown said. If they can’t afford food or school supplies, she offers them Walmart or Target gift cards. And if they hit rock bottom at home or school, she consoles them.

“She has always been a listening ear to all of her students,” Brown said. “No matter how horrible it is, how concerning, she will sit there and listen to you and she will let you cry and she will make sure that you get back up and on your feet.”

Paula Parks with officers of Bakersfield College’s Umoja Club in 2017.

Alexis Brown, left, and Parks on a Zoom call showing off merch for the Umoja Community student success program.

Teaching dolls, asking questions

Parks grew up in the Crenshaw community of Los Angeles County surrounded by extended family who provided an “incredible support system” to her, an only child whose teacher mother and attorney father divorced.

Parks loved hearing stories -– like the funny Mr. Brown ones her grandfather told her — and telling them. She constantly asked the adults in her life questions, from whether there was toilet paper by the urinals in men’s bathrooms to what her grandparents’ childhoods were like.

Parks and her father, George Brooks Parks

Parks and her parents, Betty Reynolds Parks and George Brooks Parks

Parks with her father and grandparents, Harry Bishop Reynolds and Grace Piper Reynolds

She devoured books, reacting with astonishment when she first learned she could have as many as she wanted from the bookstore around the corner, and taught lessons to her dolls after placing them in chairs around a table in her room.

“And then I would pass out paper and a pencil and I would give them a test,” she said, laughing. “And I would grade the test. Like what 10-year-old teaches her dolls and grades their papers?”

A real career in education would have to wait. A career asking questions came first.

Parks majored in English literature at UC Irvine and was third world affairs editor for the school paper, “covering everything Black, everything Hispanic, everything women, everything gay” before graduating in 1982.

A love of journalism and New York City led her to Columbia University, where she earned a master’s degree a year later. Then she landed a dream job: interning for the Los Angeles Times as a features and general assignment reporter covering everything from parades to the grief endured by loved ones of a 16-year-old boy who accidentally shot himself to death playing around with his dad’s gun in front of friends.

That led to a freelancing career for national magazines including Heart and Soul, Essence and Black Enterprise writing stories about health, parenting and personal relationships.

“The feature stories were the ones I enjoyed,” she said. “The ones where I connected with people, asked questions and got to know them, and let other people know who they are and learn whatever lessons they could from their life.”

A calling she couldn't ignore

After Parks and her physician husband, Bradford Anderson, moved to Bakersfield and their third child, Nathaniel, was going to preschool, she thought about teaching part-time. A friend let her know Bakersfield College needed instructors.

Parks started out part-time teaching low-level writing courses taken by students who scored poorly on assessment tests. As she got to know them through their journal entries, and as she saw herself making a difference in their lives, she knew academia and not journalism was her future.

“I felt someone else could write that really good story on breastfeeding or that really good story on taking a vacation as a date,” Parks said. “But I felt I had a unique skillset in reaching students and I needed to answer to that. I had a calling that I couldn’t ignore.”

Parks, left, attends Bakersfield College's 2018 graduation ceremony with colleagues from the English Department.

When she couldn’t find a textbook for her low-level composition course, she wrote one herself based on her practice of brainstorming ideas and transforming them into sentences in front of the class. Parks also advanced her own education, starting with a master’s degree in education from CSUB.

She applied what she was learning, like how to organize student discussion groups, implement peer editing and help English learners, in her own classroom. Parks earned the degree in 2001.

“I loved the program, I loved what I learned,” she said. “It helped me do my job better.”

The degree also led her to full-time work, a move from Academic Development to the English Department, tenure, and a focus on broader student-success initiatives.

Accelerating success

One of Parks’ big challenges when she first got to BC was making the remedial content interesting and inspiring the persistence necessary to complete the classes before moving onto degree-applicable English 1A. Only 3 percent of students were making it all the way through the sequence.

Parks wondered: Are the students incapable of success or do they get discouraged along the way?

To figure it out, Parks first got involved with Community Learning Practices initiatives at BC that studied why students drop their English classes and how professors can help them. They found students were dealing with challenging life issues of which professors needed to be more understanding.

One strategy that emerged was having students write letters to their professors, which they’d discuss one-on-one. It forged relationships between professor and pupil that increased learning.

Later Parks researched and spearheaded a multi-pronged “acceleration” effort building collaboration between BC’s Academic Development and English departments, creating English course curriculum, training English instructors and adding supplemental instruction -- all to move students along more quickly so they could earn their associate degrees in two years.

One tactic was compressing composition classes from 16 weeks to eight weeks and pairing it with another composition class so students could complete two courses in one semester. But whether the class was 16 or eight weeks, accelerated classes include information on study strategies, peer-led study sessions, culturally relevant material and higher expectations.

“Acceleration was the belief that students are more capable than we give them credit for,” she said.

Parks’ interest in acceleration turned into a doctoral dissertation on how to implement it in composition courses for community college students of color. She earned her PhD in higher education from Capella University in 2014.

Parks received a California Senate Resolution presented by then state Sen. Andy Vidak-R-Hanford, in 2018 for her service to student at BC and the Bakersfield community. — Parks received a California Senate Resolution presented by then-state Sen. Andy Vidak, R-Hanford, in 2018 for her service to students at BC and the Bakersfield community.

Parks earned her doctorate in higher education from Capella University in 2014. Here she is being honored at her church, Cain AME Church.

Umoja and the power of love

When Parks first saw BC success data for things like enrollment, course and sequence completion, and graduation broken down by race, she was alarmed to see Black students at the bottom in four of five categories.

That’s when she started to learn about Umoja Community programs and how their approach to teaching Black students results in higher success rates.

Umoja, now a statewide organization, promotes success through a curriculum that weaves together 18 practices that resonate with the African-American community. They include emphasizing that students are loved and worthy of education, highlighting the intellectual and cultural contributions of Black people, and incorporating mentoring and counseling tailored to them.

There are Umoja programs at nearly 60 California community colleges plus Cal State East Bay and UC Riverside and they receive financial, training and other support from organization headquarters and the state. BC’s program, which Parks started in 2015 and is formally known as the Umoja Community African-American Success Through Excellence and Persistence Program, initially included just an English, academic development and library class for about 30 students.

Today it includes statistics, astronomy, psychology and communications classes, with more departments wanting to get on board, and has hundreds of alumni.

In astronomy class, for example, instructors highlight the scientific contributions of Africans such as Egyptians who plotted the stars. In psychology, they present studies that use African Americans as examples.

“The oldest surviving text was written by an Egyptian,” she said. “So I tell my students, ‘Don’t tell me you can’t write. We’ve been writing since before Christ.’”

Umoja also includes group study sessions, cultural trips, tours of historically Black colleges and universities, mentoring and academic counseling.

Parks takes students an tours of historically Black colleges and universities including in this case, Howard University in Washington, D.C. — Parks takes students on tours of historically Black colleges and universities including in this case, Howard University in Washington, D.C.

Parks also takes students on museum tours such as this one to the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta in 2019.

Umoja doesn’t just teach skills, it fosters love of self and community, said Odella Johnson, a longtime friend and colleague of Parks who was a professor, Academic Development Department chair and director of equity and inclusion at BC before retiring in 2016. That’s important, she said, because “if a person doesn’t feel loved, it’s very difficult for them to blossom.”

“The students (in Umoja) are able to say, ‘I love my community, I love my family. Also, I love myself,’” said Johnson, also a double CSUB alumna. “And if that’s true, then I have a personal responsibility to look at my life differently and to make better choices so I can help my family, I can help my community.”

A study found students in the 2015, 2016 and 2017 Umoja cohorts were 4.2 times more likely to graduate or transfer within four years than Black students not exposed to Umoja curriculum for one semester, Parks said. The students may or may not have stayed engaged after that initial exposure.

In fall 2019, she said, Black students who took English 1aL (college-level composition with extra support) with Parks in Umoja passed at an 8 percent higher rate than Black students who took English 1a or English 1aL with another instructor the same semester.

This work hasn’t come easy to Parks, an introvert who didn’t grow up poor like many of her students, Johnson said. She attended conferences, did research and really listened to her students.

“Many of the students she worked with have a history of families that have not been financially stable for generations,” Johnson said. “It was a challenge for Paula. She was humble. She was willing to listen and learn from them.”

Odella Johnson, right, is the one who first encouraged Parks (left) to teach at Bakersfield College and they later worked together to conceive and implement student success initiatives that are closing achievement gaps on campus.

Brown, the BC psychology and nursing student, joined Umoja as a freshmen. During a three-day orientation she received free school supplies, got to know Umoja’s leaders, learned about her professors and found out what to expect in college.

Later on, Brown and her fellow students heard from speakers in their fields of study, organized a Black history conference, and learned about finances and HBCUs. Today she’s a peer mentor and vice president of the Umoja Club.

“During finals I was helping students with their presentations and their essays,” she said, describing some of the leadership skills she’s developed. “A lot of them had stage fright and I talked them through it. I’m like, ‘You’re going to be OK. Just smile, breathe. Don’t read off your screen and you’ll be OK.’”

This graphic from Bakersfield College shows the gains Black students have made completing transfer-level eligible English since Umoja’s founding in 2015.

Kern Community College District Chancellor Sonya Christian approved Parks’ Umoja program proposal when she was Bakersfield College’s president, following rejection by the previous administration due to lack of funding. Parks’ passion for and dedication to student success is the reason it’s been so successful and frequently among finalists for college and state awards, Christian said.

“She was a pioneer in this effort, and without her exuberant passion and her relentless dedication, the program would not be what it is today,” Christian said.

“Paula is someone who never understood the meaning of ‘no’ or ‘it can’t be done.’ For her, all possibilities can become a reality. And all students are capable of being successful.”

Sonya Christian, then Bakersfield College’s president and now chancellor of the Kern Community College District, visits one of Parks’ Umoja classes. She's at center with Parks.

'I like him'

Parks first saw Bradford Anderson and his big smile in a campus cafeteria at UC Irvine the summer before her freshman classes started and thought, “Oh my gosh, I like him.” He’d been a student there for a couple years. Their dorms ended up being next to each other and they’d talk, but he said he just wanted to be friends.

Anderson graduated, went off to medical school at Morehouse College in Atlanta, then returned to UC Irvine for someone else’s graduation. He and Parks re-connected and attended a sorority event together.

“And then afterwards he took me home and then he kissed me and I was like, ‘Are you kidding? You don’t like me.’”

He did like her (he was just reticent to get involved when he was a dorm staffer) and they dated long-distance for a while, then broke up. Six months later he proposed they write a book together on cat astrology (truly) and that was their excuse for getting together every few months.

They got serious about one another, married in Los Angeles between Anderson’s rotations Thanksgiving weekend 1985, and lived in Washington, D.C., where Anderson did his residency at Howard University Hospital.

Paula Parks and Bradford Anderson, foreground, celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary with a vow renewal ceremony.

Paula Parks and Bradford Anderson today. — Parks and Anderson today.

Parks and Anderson have three children. Christopher Parks Anderson is a math instructor at Bakersfield’s Rosedale Middle School and the father of their granddaughter, Aubrey. Alexis Parks Anderson is an attorney in D.C. and Nathaniel Parks Anderson is a freelance creative content creator in New York.

The family moved to Bakersfield, Anderson’s hometown, when he was recruited to work here in physical medicine and rehabilitation. “A pretty good calendar system” helped the couple juggle their careers and children, he said.

Anderson describes Parks as a loving mother who made sure her kids knew Black history and culture. They’d come home from school “and have school again” if she didn’t think they’d learned everything they should, he quipped.

Parks and her kids, Christopher Parks Anderson, Alexis Parks Anderson and Nathaniel Parks Anderson, when they were young.

Parks and her family today: Christopher Parks Anderson, Parks, Bradford Anderson, Alexis Parks Anderson and Nathaniel Parks Anderson.

The couple enjoys going to concerts and the beach, swimming, and spending time with their granddaughter. No matter where they are, Anderson said, they catch a church service. Parks frequently makes use of her Master Class subscription and most of the books that go floor to ceiling throughout their house are hers.

“She’s constantly learning something new,” he said.

An unexpected life

In 2016, Parks was a finalist for Bakersfield College’s Samuel McCall Teaching Award and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Bakersfield chapter named her Educator of the Year.

In 2016 Parks was named Educator of the Year by Bakersfield’s chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

‘Pioneering’ student success

Parks is a founding member of UC Irvine’s Black Alumni Chapter, former board member of the Kern County Black Chamber of Commerce and is active in the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority and Cain AME Church. She has worked with CSUB Director of University Outreach Darius Riggins to help her students transfer to CSUB and is a mentor in the CSUB Alumni Association’s `Runner Alumni Mentor Program.

Of her induction into the Alumni Hall of Fame, Parks said it’s a nod to the people who’ve molded her as well as encouragement to continue her work.

“My life has not unfolded the way I expected it to,” she said, noting she never planned to move to Bakersfield, go back to school, switch careers or start a program for African-American students. “And so this induction is confirmation that my life has unfolded the way it was supposed to.”

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Footnotes

Story by Christine Bedell, senior alumni engagement specialist

FootNotes

Story by Christine Bedell, senior alumni engagement specialist

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